The Italian design studio debuts a luminous new line of stools and consoles at Design Miami/Basel

For nearly a decade, the Turin-based Italian design collective Nucleo has been transforming epoxy resin—better known for its industrial applications, such as coating floors and building aerospace parts—into sophisticated, original furniture. This week at Design Miami/Basel, at the booth of Cologne, Germany–based Ammann Gallery, Nucleo presented new works from its "Souvenirs of the Last Century" series—simple wood furniture encased in solid blocks of gleaming golden resin, like insects trapped in amber—and stools from its stunning new "Jade" series, which pushes the collective’s cast-resin practice and interest in ancient materials in a new direction.

Detail of AP Jade 2.

For the "Jade" works, Nucleo director Piergiorgio Robino submerged organic material (in this case logs cut from a 200-year-old Italian oak tree) in the liquid polymer as he’s done in the past. But this time, instead of leaving it clear, he added pigment. The resulting hunks of verdant resin are both raw and refined, and have a certain amount of light-catching glitz. They suggest mineral deposits deep within the earth while still retaining a sense of high design.